Tales and fleeting memories of my liver journey unabashed

The day I met a Charlie-bird

(Proverbial Fine Print: if you haven’t noticed these stories aren’t in any particular order time line wise 🙂

So the day I met Charlie (Sean’s daughter)…the most awesome kiddo on the planet, and trust me she loves planets, and basically anything sciency. In her words she was “worried…nervous…and a little creeped out.”

She had never been in a hospital before except the time she spiked a huge temperature and had to have an IV herself. (“that hurt alot” – she says) She hid behind my “chair-toilet” because her legs were tired and she didn’t know what to do. (She’s standing by me re-capping this). Although in hindsight, probably a good thing she didn’t sit on it. I plan on doing a “how to hospital poop” post in the future in which I will expand upon the wonders and delightful alternative choices as to how and where to poop…but i digress..

Our first interaction was the fact that my Prograf (anti-rejection medicine) made me shake “like I was shaking maracas” (again her words rofl) and I kept dropping the remote to my TV and nurses station so she crept tepidly over to hand it to me a few time.

So this was two days before I was to be released for good (December 30th to be exact) and I had accumulated a lot of crap being in the hospital that amount of time. So Sean told Charlie to go get a trolley for my stuff from the lobby, which he was kidding of course and went with her to help. Charlie appeared moments later on top of said trolley like she had just ridden Splash Mountain into my room at mach 10 (think I used that term correctly…). Either way…It. Was. Amazing.

We packed everything up, with my dad helping with some stuff. Unfortunately, I had to stay an extra day before I went home. I had asked Sean and Charlie to bring up the exact outfit I went into the hospital in, not knowing really how much weight I had lost during those months (60 lbs for anyone counting)…so it was apparently was 10 times too big, but I pulled it off (thank God for wheelchairs). Being fashionable wasn’t exactly my top priority at the time…

Then came the ride home…it was so CRAZY…I felt like someone that had been in jail or something, seeing the outside for the first time…the sky, the grass, other cars….other people, hearing birds and normal people doing people things sounds. It baffled me. But was wonderful…

So to wrap up this post, and thus immortalizing meeting one of the truely brave and amazing young ladies I will ever have the pleasure of meeting and am thankful every day I get to interact with her…here is the real Charlie-bird playing with Frank the pug on my wheelchair I had to use for a while when I got home before I could walk on my own obviously…She’s a pretty greatkid who now says “we’re like best-friends”…can’t go wrong with that!